Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Coming Apart On CNN

Charles Murray's fantastic book, Coming Apart, describes how the US has bifurcated into two, almost non-intersecting worlds. In the book, he creates fictional locales to illustrate the two sides, one is blue collar Fishtown and the other is professional, upscale Belmont. The people living in Belmont have lost touch with the way the rest of the world lives, but they still think they know what's best for everyone.

Coming Apart was one of those books that changed the way I saw the world. For example, check out as much as you can stomach of the ignorant Don Lemon of CNN arguing with Sheriff David Clarke over the recent cop killings by BLM folks.

Lemon is upscale Belmont, Clarke is blue collar Fishtown. He might not have a Harvard degree, but Clarke thoroughly understands crime and poverty. He spends a lot of his time working in the worst areas of his city and he has been taught the latest methods of policing and crime analysis. Lemon is a highly-paid talking head for one of the major networks. It's doubtful that he has visited a police station or prison lately. I would bet he doesn't even drive through the worst neighborhoods, much less know them intimately like Clarke.

And yet, he tries to lecture Clarke about crime. He thinks his suits, degrees and status make him the intellectual superior of the sheriff.

That, in a nutshell, is a big source of tsunami of discontent sweeping the nation and the one that drove Brexit. Credentialed, educated experts telling the rest of us not only what to do, but feeding us rubbish that we know from lived experience to be lies.

We can't figure out the motives of the cop killings or the Islamic attacks? Are you serious? Of course we can. It's all there in front of us. Meanwhile, the elite go home to their gated communities, aghast at the ignorant morons they have the misfortune to try to manage.

6 comments:

The officer was rather hostile. I suppose that's understandable as the only place that would be more against his message would be MSNBC.

Lemon tried to make himself come off as level hapeaded and so cut to commercial when we was going to lose it. Then he conviently said anything that didn't support his ideology was not the conversation they were having. Because any answer he could give would have been a complete lie.

I'd be hostile, too, if I had to deal with the lies and slander coming from the media, politicians and academia. Those cops shot in Dallas and Baton Rouge were guilty of nothing other than risking their lives on a daily basis to keep us safe.

I thought the officer was very reasonable. And the anchor is - really, he's part of the problem. Willfully blind to reality, pushing his precious narrative, not willing to listen, much less to hear. And so proud of his role upholding the king.

Some of the anti-gun pepper like to say "I've never felt the need for a gun". At which point, I shoot back with: "You must have lived in nicer neighborhoods than I have". I live between fishtown and Belmont. Most people nowadays do. But I like the Fishtown folk better.

... you know, where children do such things as:a) surround you in a gang an through rock at you because you tell them to get off your property;b) slash your tires because you embarrass them in front of their (current) chick when chase them out of your out-buildings;c) threaten to burn down your house because you chase them out of your out-buildings;... because they know that the police really won't do much about it ... because the people in Belmont call the shots and don't give a damn about the law-abiding tax-payers in Fishtown.